Though it normally affects women, there are some cases of men coming down with the disease. The treatment process can take anywhere from a few weeks to months. He used those words: 'Her brain is on fire,'" according to KYW.Ĭalahan underwent a spinal fluid test to determine the diagnosis and underwent immunotherapy. When doctors saw that she put all the numbers on the right side, they realized there was a neurological root cause.Ĭahalan says this is how doctors explained it to her parents, "He told them her brain is on fire. I was a relatively normal person, then the next minute I'm hallucinating and insisting that my father had kidnapped me," said Cahalan.įinally, Najjar was called on the case. "I had bizarre abnormal movements, would leave my arms out extended, you know, in front of me. Because of conditions like this that we are just learning about, Najjar believes that many forms of psychological disorders - such as types of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD and depression - may be due to brain inflammation.
However, because it is relatively new and presents itself like other illnesses, he thinks that about 90 percent of those who were suffering from anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis in 2009 went undiagnosed. Souhel Najjar, an associate professor of neurology at NYU medical center and an expert on anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, told The Guardian that thousands of people have been diagnosed with the unusual disease. In addition, neurological problems persist in 75 percent of the patients, and relapse occurs 20 percent of the time.ĭr.
A study in Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience in 2011 reported that the disease is fatal in 25 percent of the cases. Symptoms can include paranoia, mania, being dazed, personality changes, acting "possessed" and being catatonic, which can lead some medical professionals to diagnose the problem as psychological instead of physical. A newly diagnosed brain disease that is infecting mostly young women may be behind some misdiagnosed psychological disorders, according to some experts.Īnti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, first identified in 2007, is an auto-immune disease that occurs when antibodies turn on the brain and cause it to swell, according to CBS station KYW in Philadelphia.
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